The Lucasville Uprising was a rebellion against oppressive and racist policies at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility (SOCF) in Lucasville, OH. Nine inmates and one guard died during the uprising in April of 1993. Today, many people are serving time or condemned to death by the state of Ohio in relation to the uprising. We demand amnesty for all of these inmates. The conditions at SOCF were (and still are) intolerable and unconscionable.

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Prison strike organizers to protest food giant Aramark

The Free Alabama Movement is planning its next move after last year’s prison strike. Photo via Getty Images

The people who organized the country’s biggest prison strike against what they call modern-day slavery have planned their next target: corporate food service giant Aramark.
The $8.65 billion company is one of the country’s largest employers
and serves hot dogs, burgers, sandwiches and other food to more than 100
million people a year at hospitals, sports stadiums, amphitheaters,
schools and other facilities. It also provides meals for more than 500
correctional facilities across the country and has been the subject of
complaints about maggots and rocks, sexual harassment, drug trafficking and other employee misconduct.
While Aramark says these allegations are inaccurate, on Jan. 14,
leaders of the Free Alabama Movement, which led a national prison labor
strike that began on Sept. 9, will bus from Alabama to Washington, D.C.,
to join a civil rights march and protest the company.
“They are the biggest benefactors of prisoners,” said the movement’s
spokesman Pastor Kenneth Glasgow. “And they have a history of neglecting
prisoners, serving bad food, not enough food, or undernourished food …
this is why we have chosen to boycott.”
Siddique Abdullah Hasan, an inmate on death row at Ohio State
Penitentiary in Youngstown, Ohio, for his role in the state’s worst-ever
prison riot in 1993,
has gone on hunger strikes because he said Aramark food was cold and
the quantities were half the appropriate serving. Prison authorities
agreed to address the issues after a month of starvation, he said. Now
he is pushing for halal meals.
“They have no accountability,” he said. “This is part of
the increasing privatization of prisons and ancillary services that
we’ve seen over the past few decades.” — David Fathi, ACLU
Glasgow said inmates across the nation are also planning to stand
in solidarity with the movement’s march on Jan. 14, by refusing to work
— again.
Last year, in the lead-up to the anniversary of the historic uprising
at the Attica Correctional Facility in New York that killed 43 people
in 1971, Glasgow and his allies called on inmates to stop the prison
labor system, which they say amounts to slavery.
While the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in 1865, it did not apply
to people who committed crimes – an exception that enabled plantation
owners to replace slaves with prison workers and still exists today.
And in recent decades, the incarcerated population has grown to more than 2.2 million, the majority of them black or Latino, all of whom can be required to work for a lucrative industry that often pays them cents to the hour.
Businesses such as Victoria’s Secret, Starbucks, Whole Foods, Revlon, AT&T, Target and
many more, as well as governments, which use inmate labor for daily
operations such as laundry and janitorial services, have used the cheap or free labor. And private companies such as Aramark and Trinity Services Group, another major food vendor for prisons, are paid millions of dollars to take over government operations.
“It used to be that prison food was prepared and served by
[government] employees, sometimes with prison workers assisting,” said
David Fathi, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s
National Prison Project. “This is part of the increasing privatization
of prisons and ancillary services that we’ve seen over the past few
decades.”

Illustration
by Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, frequent contributor to the San Francisco
Bay View newspaper who is incarcerated at the Clements Unit in
Amarillo, Texas.

The shift toward privatization has been called a “prison-industrial
complex” by the Free Alabama Movement and justice reform advocates, who
add that it has created an economic incentive to keep inmates in jail.
And on Sept. 9, the anniversary of the Attica takeover, thousands of
inmates across dozens of state prisons went on strike to rail against
it.
There were reports of pepper spray, teargas and zip ties at Kinross
Correctional Facility in Michigan before hundreds of people believed to
be involved were transferred to other facilities. Inmates across the
country were also censored, prevented from receiving newspapers and put
in isolation.
“That was the first wave,” Glasgow said. “This is the second wave.”
In 2015, the state of Michigan canceled a controversial, $145
million, three-year contract with the company. In addition to complaints
about the quality of food, more than 100 Aramark employees were banned
from prison grounds for inappropriate behavior, according to state officials. That year, a judge also found an Aramark supervisor guilty of trying to arrange an assault on an inmate.
Aramark spokesperson Karen Cutler said in an email that rumors about
the quality of food were planted by opponents of outsourcing and
inmates.
“There were three confirmed cases of sabotage caused by inmates using maggots in Ohio, and one in Michigan,” Cutler said.
Saying her remark was a “blatant lie,” Hasan said he knew a prisoner
who brought maggots to the attention of correctional officers.
Cutler also said, without referencing the case about the Aramark
supervisor, that employee misconduct occurs regularly in most positions
at every correctional facility in the country.
“Aramark has been a valued partner to the corrections industry for
nearly 40 years, helping 500 facilities around the country maintain
safe, stable environments for millions of offenders, officers and staff
every day,” she said. “Our dedication to quality and service have made
us a leader in our industry for more than 75 years.”
Fathi said he did not think Aramark was any better or worse than
other prison food companies, nor does the ACLU have a stance on a
prospective campaign against it. But he said that the Free Alabama
Movement’s complaints illustrate the core problems of privatizing prison
services.
“It’s a monopoly and the consumers have ultimately zero choice,” he
said. “In the outside world, a company that provides bad service, whose
employees commit misdeeds, will eventually go out of business.”
Regardless, he said he will be paying attention on Jan. 14.
“I think many of us were surprised by the magnitude of and
coordination exhibited by the prison strike last year, so it would not
surprise me if this turned out to be quite widespread,” he said. “Time
will tell.”